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Lewis Hamilton impresses at first day of Formula One Bahrain testing

Lewis Hamilton and the Mercedes team are hoping for improvement after a disappointing 2013 season. Photo by LAT PHOTOGRAPHIC

Lewis Hamilton was pleased with the progress of Mercedes on the opening day of the Formula One Bahrain test, despite brake by wire issues ending his running early.

Hamilton set the third fastest lap of the day, although he stressed that the times are not important at this stage.

“It's been impressive to see us start the Bahrain test with good mileage and reliability,” said Hamilton. “Especially when you see how difficult it is for everyone with the new regulations. The team can be very proud of this after so much hard work. Today was another good test of the car to see if any issues came up -- we had a small issue with the brakes at the end, but were still able to achieve a lot of laps today.

“We're not aiming to be top of the timesheets at the moment, it's more about ticking the reliability boxes, but we can be happy with where we are before the halfway point of the pre-season tests.”

“We ran our program as expected today until the running came to a conclusion slightly earlier than we would have liked with a brake issue,” said Paddy Lowe, executive director of Mercedes Formula One. “We did get through all of the planned data logging runs, and the lap count was high. There is a great deal still to be done, and a lot of the things we've been focusing on during the break since Jerez are working as intended.

“That is a great credit to the team working on the car at the factory and at the track to carry on from where we left off at the last test. Nico [Rosberg] will be in the car tomorrow, and we look forward to doing more long runs in consistent weather conditions.”